Creepiest Letters From Friends and Associates

For years, politicians and the American public have clamored for more disclosures about the activities and connections of the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who surrounded himself with powerful, famous friends while trafficking hundreds of young women and girls for sex with the help of his now imprisoned accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. As yet, records from a sprawling array of court cases and a vast trove of FBI materials related to their investigation of Epstein — together colloquially known as the “Epstein Files” — have not seen the light of day.

But on Monday, the House Oversight Committee did release select documents provided by Epstein’s estate, including the terms of a 2007 non-prosecution agreement — the so-called “sweetheart” plea deal that allowed Epstein to avoid federal charges at the time — and his last will and testament. The real bombshell was a birthday scrapbook that Maxwell put together for Epstein’s 50th birthday, full of doodles, poems, photos, and letters from people in his life. One such person was Donald Trump, who allegedly contributed an abstract drawing of a nude woman and an imagined dialogue between the two men that concluded, “Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump and the White House denied the existence of such a letter when it was first reported on by The Wall Street Journal in July; now they claim the letter itself is fake.

The president’s years of close association with Epstein before they fell out sometime in the mid-2000s (the birthday book was created in 2003) have come in for renewed scrutiny during his second term, in part because the MAGA faithful have been particularly vocal about the need for full government transparency on Epstein, believing that this will hurt prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites rather than Trump. This has largely backfired, with Trump continually seeking to move past the Epstein story and convince his supporters that it’s a dead issue while more and more details of his friendship with the financier trickle out.

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What’s remarkable about the birthday book, though, is that Trump’s alleged letter is hardly out of place with its creepy innuendos and suggestive sketch. In fact, the three-volume scrapbook — totaling over 200 pages — is full of such veiled references from Epstein’s pals, direct commentary about his insatiable lust and countless “girlfriends,” and redacted photos of Epstein with scantily clad or partially nude women. There are also drawings that allude to his travel by private jet (his Boeing 727-100 aircraft, on which he allegedly had sex with teenaged girls, has been dubbed the “Lolita Express”) and nods to his illicit behavior. A collection of limericks written by his art advisor, Stuart Pivar, for example, notes that Epstein, “though up to no good/whenever he could/has avoided the penitentiary.”

The book has an introduction by Maxwell and is organized by categories of relatives and acquaintances, opening with a “Family” section featuring recollections from his parents and his brother, Mark Epstein. This is followed by letters from people who knew him as he grew up in Sea Gate, a private community in Coney Island, Brooklyn, in the 1950s and 1960s. One unsigned, handwritten portion by a Brooklyn friend recalls how the author, Epstein, their friend Warren Eisenstein, and Epstein’s brother Mark picked up girls on the beach and took them out on a boat, where the author claims to have taken out a knife and told them to strip off their bathing suits. The same author describes himself and Epstein “in bed porking some girls” while Epstein is “shoving penicillin down my throat.” He further recounts going out with Epstein and “two very young girls probably just 17.” The typewritten letter after that, signed by a “Johnny Boy Kafka,” describes Epstein’s parents conceiving him in extremely graphic detail.

Next comes one of two separate portions titled “Girlfriends,” which leads with a letter from an acquaintance whose name is redacted. The writer states that in the 1970s, Epstein “participated in peace marches because they were the easiest places to get laid,” and joked that this was a “truly unique perspective on political activism.” There are more intimate pictures of Epstein with women whose faces are redacted, and multiple shots of him luxuriating in bathtubs, including one where his genitals appear to be censored, and another captioned “waiting for my foot massage.” In another photo, Epstein appears to be buying something from a specialty grocer — the caption is “Are you sure this will make my ‘winkie’ grow?” A photo of Epstein with a woman whose face is redacted is labeled with the quote “We think he works for the CIA.” (Rumors of Epstein’s links to intelligence services, while widespread, have never been substantively confirmed.) There are also pictures of Maxwell: one in which she appears to be speaking with a woman whose image is redacted, bearing the caption “He promised you what?!!” In another partially redacted image, she and Epstein appear naked in a pool, with him holding her from behind.

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Then there is a section titled “Children.” It includes a short story, in what appears to be a child’s handwriting, about a character named “Uncel F” attempting to use a toilet to defecate but eliminating on the floor instead. The subsequent pages include a childlike drawing of a wedding and redacted photos of young children in bed, playing piano, and evidently posing for the camera, with captions in what appears to be Maxwell’s handwriting. Epstein was not known to have fathered any children himself, though he reportedly talked about a plan to impregnate multiple women at his New Mexico ranch to seed the human race with his DNA.

The “Friends” chapter of the birthday book, which includes the letter that Trump denies writing, is perhaps the most disturbing. It begins with a photo of what appears to be Epstein and another man in hooded masks, and text that reads in part: “Jeffrey unveiled his plan. To some it may have seemed a get-rich-quick scheme, but to me it was pure genius: Rob and Kill was the name of the plan. The first victim, to be attacked and brutally plundered (would she want more than that?) on the boardwalk in Venice Beach. Broad daylight. The dastardly thieves were never caught.” Another letter addresses Epstein as “Degenerate One” and is signed “Degenerate II.” Alan Dershowitz, the famed attorney who once counted Epstein as a client, submitted a spoof cover of Vanity Fair, tweaked as Vanity Unfair, with fake headlines speculating that Epstein was Jack the Ripper and had financed the terrorist group Al Qaeda. Dershowitz joked that he had “talked them into changing the focus” of the issue “from you to Bill Clinton.” (Clinton, too, appears in the scrapbook, with a brief scribbled note commending Epstein for his “childlike curiosity.”)

Other friends rehashed lewd incidents and wrote of “his luxurious homes he likes to share with his friends (yum yum).” Nathan Myhrvold, former Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, noted that he was “ill prepared to comment on” Epstein’s lifestyle “in any detail,” and instead appended pictures from a recent trip to Africa that showed zebras and lions having sex. Joel Pashcow, former chairman of a New York real estate company, contributed clip art of an airplane and women in bathing suits. The illustration following that page includes comic-book style drawings of Epstein: in the first panel, labeled “1983,” he is shabbily dressed and offering girls balloons at a birthday party. In the second, labeled “2003,” Epstein is seen relaxing at an oceanside mansion, his private jet overhead, as he is massaged by four practically naked blonde women, one sporting a heart tattoo with the letters “JE” on her buttocks. “What a great country!” reads the text on this half of the page.

Trump comes up a second time in the “Friends” collage, with Epstein seen in a photo holding a large novelty check that bears his name. “Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women!” the caption says. “Sells ‘fully depreciated’ [name redacted] to Donald Trump.” Epstein is posing with Pashcow, a third man, and a woman whose face is censored. (Trump in July made the remarkable claim that he and Epstein eventually parted ways because the financier “stole” spa workers from his Mar-a-Lago club.) Another letter included an illustration of breasts, with the note “I wanted to get you what you want,” and painted designs with the impression of a nipple on the page — captioned as “tit prints” and “specially commissioned” by the late economist Henry Rosovsky.

A followup “Girlfriends” chapter includes a letter from a woman who wrote that her life was “forever changed” after she was hired by Maxwell to massage Epstein’s feet and was then ushered into his world. “With you, dear Jeffrey, I laugh like a little girl and feel like a woman,” she wrote, attaching a photo of her buttocks in a bathing suit. Another woman supplied photos of her breasts, which are redacted, as well as a bra. A third recalled how she had gone shopping with Epstein at Bloomingdale’s, where he inquired if she were a virgin and then threw her “down on the floor… right smack in the middle of the shoe dept. and started kissing and tickling me all over!!” This author included a photo of herself, face redacted, in her underwear, labeled: “Visiting you down in Palm Beach… Can’t get a second of privacy with you and a camera around ha ha!” Yet another woman wrote that she wanted to “cut” Epstein “into bird-head pieces and chew them between my molars until I suck all the blood and juice out of you.” Letters from supposed “Assistants” were no less salacious: like the “Girlfriends,” they included plenty of bikini shots and other winks at sexual relationships.

One of the last shocking items in the book comes in the “Business” chapter, from Elliot Wolk, who worked at Bear Stearns when Epstein was at the investment bank in the 1970s. “Jeffrey I remember in the mid 1970s you being a star salesman for our tax advantaged strategies and hedged option program,” he wrote. “I was running an account for Bob Maxwell.” That would be the media mogul Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine Maxwell. “You always had the ability to know everyone and be charming,” wrote Wolk. “Was that when you first discovered the Maxwell teen-age daughter…” Officially, Epstein and Maxwell did not date until 1991. In 1976, when Epstein joined Bear Stearns, he would have been in his early twenties, while Maxwell would have been in her mid-teens.

Creepiest Letters From Friends and Associates

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